Manzello was designed by Dusan Jelesijevic and published by Tour De Force. Manzello contains 4 styles and family package options.
To start with one personal fact: I really like to listen Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He was a multi-instrumentalist, real grandmaster and unique jazz virtuoso. The way he improvised and walked through variety of different music influences are admiring. One of things he liked is to modify instruments, so he modified soprano saxophone and got an instrument called manzello.
When I was looking for good name for this typeface, it came on my mind that Manzello could be the perfect one. It has the symbolic background from the instrument and theoretically in my head, it’s imagined as typeface that rely on stable classic examples, but graphically designed and modified to match modern standards.
Manzello contains a dose of characteristics of display typefaces with terminals that aren’t perfectly rounded, high contrast between stems and good balanced Italics with elements of fine calligraphy. It’s a small font family, something what I was always looking for to have as first text solution in my web and graphic projects.